Love Brain

I once worked as an assistant to a general contractor dude in his late thirties. When I started, I had little experience that could be of use to Tom (name changed to protect the uh, innocent) other than enthusiasm, which he assured me was more than enough. Tom had been the landlord of my last apartment. I knew enough of him to surmise that he was laid back (smoked copious amounts of weed), had enough work to keep an assistant fully employed, and though a little creepy, was just a dude who loved his family, job and weed.

From the start, Tom and I had good friendly rapport. I made him laugh; he made interesting philosophical points; I proved to be great organizational assistance because he was perpetually stoned. Life was good. Eight hours a day in close proximity, however, had its affect on Tom’s blurry subconscious. My job description expanded from installing drywall, plumbing, and painting to include deflecting sexual advances. The increased workload made for increased discomfort.

On the day that would be my last, Tom gave me a book and confessed his “crush.” The whole ordeal was laughable considering how many passes he‘d already made at me. I tried to redirect the conversation to my current boyfriend (a tactic to thwart attention that I’m not sure ever really works), and when I mentioned that he was the second person I’d dated seriously, Tom got visibly uncomfortable. He paused. “Honey, I thought you’d been around the block a few more times,” he said anxiously. He told me he couldn’t do it after all--the emotional drama that I would create would “wreck” him and his family. As if to twist the knife of absurdity, he said he’d known from the start that I was afraid of falling in love with him and though he couldn’t be with me, he still needed me to come in early on Monday to finish this bathroom job.

My head was spinning as I left the job site. What the fuck was wrong with this guy? Where did he get off telling me I was afraid of falling in love with him? The outburst was the last straw. I quit in person, in front of his wife, two days later. Though I was finally off board the emotional rollercoaster, I couldn‘t shake from my mind his assertion that I was afraid of falling in love with him...

It was true.

In my case with Tom, I knew I was dangerously close to being seduced. I was too vulnerable and he was too in touch with my emotions. Any extended duration of employment would have led to either sex or insanity. We both caught wind of this before it happened, but the looming power of lust muddied our attempt to maintain a functional fellowship.

As it always seems to these days.

Casual sex for twenty-somethings is an easily addictive and attainable high. We mourn having fewer non-sexual friendships with the opposite sex, but then we keep indulging in the same behavior. Lust is a persistent and influential instigator.

There is science behind the madness. Sexual appetite is heightened by the release of the hormone testosterone. Though you’d think this release would occur in the sex organs, it’s actually happening in the brain (though the phrase “thinking with your dick” should definitely maintain its idiomatic stature). Testosterone increases in men often coincide with visual imagery (example, seeing a flash of leg). In women, words of affection or situational reminders increase levels of testosterone.

Studies have shown that female arousal tends to be sporadic and unpredictable. I personally cannot understand why you’d want to piggyback that biological trait with a clitoris piercing, but that’s just because the thought of having an orgasm while walking down the cereal isle terrifies me. Female arousal can be explained by the fact that the callosum--the fiber that connects brain hemispheres--is said to be larger in females than in males, which allows us greater access to both sides of our brain. This trait is both a blessing and a curse. We’re better with language (Dudes, stop making fun of us. We can’t help it, it‘s just how our brains work.) And we‘re aroused by a whole hiccup of things. Wait, which one‘s supposed to be the curse?

Men have more active parietal lobes, which integrate sensory information like that flash of leg. They experience lust most strongly in morning and in autumn. Women are horniest during ovulation. Both genders indulge in one-night stands, emotionally detached “hook up” partnerships and affairs. Both also settle for relations that are emotionally unattached when they want attachment. Humans are said to formulate their romantic ideals by age ten. At some point in our twenties, we throw them out the window.

Just like we do all kinds of things (I so wish I had been here):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJkhohR2-BA

We toss out the ethics, then chalk it up to being young and experimental. “Just trying to add notches on the bedpost” we say, patting ourselves on the back for sneakily masking our fears from outsiders. The fears, however, remain. We fear that our romantic ideals are too far-fetched. We fear that love isn’t real.

But sex is not just about lust. Even the most basic one-night stand can contain components of love, as sex releases more chemicals in our brains than just testosterone. After an orgasm, serotonin is released, which gives us feelings of relaxation and comfort. Later, when thinking about the person we had sex with, our brains release dopamine. Dopamine entices fantasies and love sickness (assuming it was all well and good). It is activated in the part of our brains associated with rewards and addictions, the mesolimbic reward system. Dopamine metabolizes into norepinephrine, which causes our hearts to beat faster and blood flows to increase (think of the last time you were on uppers, if you were ever recently on uppers). Phenylethylamine gives us feelings of romantic well-being, encouraging us to further sip the “chemicals of love” cocktail, whether we like it or not. This cocktail meddles with our intention to have strictly casual sex.

Moreover, sex releases chemicals of attachment (“the cuddle chemicals”) in both men and women--oxytocin in females and vasopressin in males. The release of each requires the necessary amounts of sex-appropriate hormones (estrogen and testosterone, respectively). These chemicals influence more than just post-coitus cuddling. People with varied or inadequate levels of these chemicals are said to have anxious attachment styles (crazy jealous girlfriend, for one); people with strictly low levels are said to have avoidant styles.

If you’re thinking this sounds a little too over-scienceified, I’d say I agree. People have all kinds of experiences over a lifetime that influence how they think about and respond to sex. The take home message is not that love is just brain chemistry and that everything we‘re feeling while in love/lust is a series of chemical reactions--it is that the whole business is cerebral. And that there’s a lot more going on during sex than just the act.

Rejection too is painfully cerebral. Getting rejected especially sucks (from my vantage point) when you’re a woman (who wants verbal closure because that’s how your brain’s wired) getting rejected by a man (who doesn’t see the point in talking about it). I used to think that that famous scene from “A Few Good Men” made good allegory of this point (Tom Cruise obviously embodying the female):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hGvQtumNAY

I thought this because I am a girl, and girls like to think. We put a lot of thought into our relationships, our breakups, and our post-facto analysis of relationships and breakups (as in, I feel like I have been writing this article FOR EVER). We don’t necessarily know what’s going on in the brains of our male counterpoints, but we like to think we know. When they “don’t want to talk about it,” most men probably aren’t on some mission to protect the walls of their subconscious with honor, code and loyalty. Nor are they out to hurt us. But we’ll believe both are true. We’re women in love, we can’t help it.

After I quit my assistant contractor post, Tom continued to text and email me, alluding to how he didn't trust me anymore. In response, I played Nicholson--a role I wasn't used to playing. I guarded my walls. I cut off contact. “He can’t handle the truth,” I muttered obsessively while alone in my room.

Which was a lie. I was the one who couldn’t handle it.



Author’s note: This article (and brain-related articles that are to follow) is inspired by the very bomb third edition of The Owner’s Manual for the Brain: Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research. It is by Pierce J. Howard and is really good.

Some Truths Behind Toxic Shock Syndrome

A couple of weeks ago, I began telling my female friends that I was considering writing a story about Toxic Shock Syndrome (or TSS). TSS is a fast moving bacterial-caused illness that can systematically shut down organs (kidneys and liver included) if not immediately treated. The syndrome is widely known among women as a morbid outcome of tampon mis-use. Leave your tampon in for more than eight hours and you are severely at risk, we are told.

My friends, who had long ago been familiarized with the facts and mythology behind TSS, each had the same response: “I don’t think it exists.” One friend informed me that she had recently lost complete track of her tampon use to no consequence, realizing three days into her period that one was wedged into the depths of her vagina. “Someone had just told me about when they forgot to take out a tampon once,” she said in a chipper voice, “and I was sitting there like, oh my god, I have a tampon in!”

None of my friends had had a TSS encounter of any type. Some of them had even fully forgotten about it. Having never have met a victim myself, I too considered the syndrome a sort of feminine urban myth. My friend’s disappearing tampon anecdote seemed to confirm its non-existence.

I began my research. Approximately 4 in 100,000 tampon users get TSS. Blanket symptoms include rapidly progressing fever and falling blood pressure, skin blanching, vomiting and diarrhea. As I read and wrote, I felt like an uninspired kid in Catholic school studying bible passages for a catechism exam. It was informative for a purpose, but no mind-blowing.

Then I read a personal account. A woman whose daughter had died from TSS posted an entry on a fact site. Her writing was honest and informative. Something about this woman masking the pain of losing a daughter with a desire to help others evade the same fate zapped me from my state of indifference. I was again the wide-eyed fourteen year old checking my watch every thirty minutes to see if six to eight hours was up yet. I called my 24hr tampon friend back. Hey, just double checking that you‘re okay. I asked her to repeat her story. As she spoke again, I felt phantom pain crawling from my cervix to my navel, then my rib cage…

If she was someone else, she could have died.

Although 4 in 100,000 is obviously a small number, the fact that TSS was practically unheard of before 1980 is not insignificant. In 1978, the company Procter and Gamble introduced the first super absorbent Rely tampons, which could contain an entire menstrual flow without leaking or needing replacement. Carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) and polyester fibers provided the mega-absorbency. Within two years, the Center for Disease Control determined that increased Rely tampon publicity had led to increased cases of toxic shock syndrome. The fibers could not filter Staphylococcus aureus, the toxic bacteria that causes menstrual-related TSS. Rely tampons were recalled, and the number of cases reported to the CDC began to decline.

Though it did not entirely disappear, TSS went off the radar. Then, in the late ’90s, Proctor and Gamble returned to the tampon scene (the company purchased Tambrands, the tampon giant that makes Tampax) and the syndrome again received a flurry of media coverage. TSS related rumors, as well as scientific evaluations of the current safety of tampons, spread quickly. Case numbers stayed low. The early 2000s did see a slight spike (one study considered it to be a result of earlier menstruation in girls), but Rely-like scandals were no more.

Toxic Shock Syndrome is caused by toxin that comes from one of two types of bacterium: either Staphylococcus aureus (think staph infections) or Streptococcus pyogenes (think strep throat). Strep TSS has nothing to do with menstruation, and not all of staph cases are menstrual-related. Strep TSS can occur in people with infected surgical wounds or respiratory infections, or in women who recently gave birth. Some Staph TSS cases can also be caused by surgical wounds. Staph bacteria can be found on the skin and in the noses of about a third of the population. Most people have antibodies that protect them against the dangerous strands of the bacteria that cause TSS--95% of women have the antibodies by the time they are thirty. They are then immune to it. People who get it once, however, are more likely to get it again.

Here I feel that I could go into more precise details of what is happening scientifically in TSS, but I’d rather hand the microphone to the mourning mother:

“The truth is, the deadly toxins begin to multiply within 2 hours after inserting your first tampon. Regular, or Super! When you change a tampon after even just a few hours that toxin remains inside just waiting for you to put in a new tampon. It takes up right where it left off when it comes into contact with the viscose rayon [a fiber often used in today’s market] in the tampon. The longer you continue to use tampons even while changing the more concentrated the toxin becomes, Once this toxin gets into your blood stream, (it can enter with only a couple of scuffed off cells from changing a tampon) it's 10,000 times more deadly than sepsis alone.

“The reason you need to use a pad at night for at least 8 hours is, you remove that rayon filled tampon and the toxin takes that 8 hours to dissipate, (die off) then in the morning you can start the deadly process all over again. Providing your tampon isn't leaving fibers behind..…”

As I reread this woman’s account, it gives me the same feeling of uneasiness it did the first time. I use tampons. I leave them in overnight. Sometimes all day. I am very much alive and this woman’s daughter very much dead. Why her instead of me? My body contains antibodies that hers did not. It is neither of our faults, it just is.

The real truth behind TSS cannot be found in the paragraphs containing the tampon industry’s shady history or the science behind the syndrome. The real truth is that people get it and people die. Medical discoveries do not have to be earth shattering to be real.

Antibiotics Files, Part 1

Every person on earth tells lies, excluding maybe yet-to-be canonized saints and Al Franken. We say things we know are not true, things we think are true that are not, and things that that just pop into our head, their truthfulness unimportant. We say things that are off-base and misguided. Not all these are equally abominable, but all require some sort of recognition of fault, in my opinion.

My Confession:

In my last post I wrote in my “Quick Facts” section: “The common cold is a virus, not a bacterial infection. Antibiotics cannot cure your cold. You know this; stop playing dumb and asking your doctors for them anyway.”

This was off-base and misguided. People are not asking doctors for antibiotics. Doctors are shoving them down our throats.

Last week, I made my own doctor visit for a sore throat I had had for ten days. I sat on the paper covered bed, opened wide as the Physician’s Assistant cocked her lit magnifier towards my throat and nodded, zombie-like, when she said “That looks bad. Let’s get you on antibiotics.”

Six days into antibiotics, my throat looks EXACTLY THE SAME AS IT DID WHEN I STARTED. Swollen, discolored and helpless.

So why did I fall for it? Why, even after her rapid strep came back negative, did I not say “Um, are you sure, lady?” Why was I able to say that so confidently to my roommate when she offered me her unused Amoxicillin pack, but choke when the PA prescribed the same thing? Why?!? Because although my P.A.’s answer to my question of whether or not this would work was not a definite yes, it was a definite “I hope so and am banking on it.” Her hope rubbed off on me. I abandoned my wariness of the drugs. I was on board the antibiotics train because she was. I wanted to go where she was going.

In fact, the rail attendants shoved me off in "antibiotic misuse hatred" land, which is a far cry from "fully healed thanks to antibiotics!"-ville, but really not that far from where I started. A week into antibiotics my sore throat pain is just as intense as it was before. With my Ibuprophen supply dwindling, I decided to finally go homeopathic; (my inability to do so earlier is probably why this thing mutated so severely in the first place). I did a few salt gargles, but they reminded me too much of accidentally lapping sea water while trying to soothe an expanding sunburn at a crowded beach. I tried an apple cider vinegar gargle. That one led to seething pain and a whole bunch of extra swollen-ness. The morning after apple cider, I wondered if my throat would ever feel normal again.

Then I tried a cayenne pepper gargle. Its slight sting, lingering tingle and subsequent numbness was the trick I was looking for.

I have since adopted the cayenne as my pain-reliever of choice. I carry my concoction around in a pink travel mug, to work, the movie theater, friends’ houses. My mug has become my own version of an a smoker's cig pack. I always have it within reach. When feeling slightly detached from conversation I catch myself drumming it with my finger nails, my gaze drifting as I compute the shortest distance to a location socially acceptable for me to gargle and spit. It has truly become the only source of relief I’ve found in this seemingly endless infection.

As I trudge it out, I continue to take my antibiotic pills three times a day. They are like the placebo pills of a birth control pack, except that the introduced antibodies would mutate into suberbugs if I didn't take them.

I will take them all. I will not let them beat me, and I will not board that train again.

Insane in the Mucus Membranes

Here in Colorado in February, we’re experiencing the typical blackoutdrunkepileptic winter, which is to say that the season of "winter" is too mentally unstable to chose between springy and frigid cold weather, so it just oscillates between the two for about six months. Though it’s not scientifically proven that cold weather makes the human body more susceptible to the common cold, catching a cold seems to go hand in hand with drastically changing temperatures. And with the cold, comes the snot.

Mucus, like everything in the human bod, can be disassembled at the cellular level, where mucus cells are produced in mucus glands in the mucus membrane. Mucous membranes are numerous in the human body, lining areas including the stomach, mouth, lips, eyelids, ears, genital area and anus, though not all secrete mucus. (Or at least not all the time). The cells are rich in proteins and water. The wet, sticky texture of mucus allows it to trap infectious agents including fungi, bacteria and viruses from damaging the protective tissue, or epithelium, in the aforementioned areas. In the nose, mucus traps the agents and holds them there in booger form until ejection.

A runny nose is often a reaction to a sort of ice/heat pack effect on the nose. The nose contains cilia, which are sensory organelles that sweep mucus toward the back of the throat. During cold weather the cilia become sluggish and the mucus becomes thicker. When reintroduced to warmblooded-friendly temperatures, the mucus thaws and runs out the nose until the cilia can shake it off. As for the heat pack effect, spicy food numbs the cilia temporarily useless, causing the should-be medical condition “spicy food nasal drip.” (Author’s note: I am writing this next to an empty bowl of spicy green chili and a resultant mountain of tissues. I‘m not just getting this stuff from wikipedia, I swear.)

Quick Facts on Mucus:

-Mucus is spelled "mucus" as a noun and "mucous" as an adjective. Sounds like Mufasa or Moukassa.

-Your body makes 1 litre of mucus a DAY! Sick!

-People with strong immune systems are more likely to develop symptomatic colds, as the symptoms of the virus occur because of a strong immune response. People with weak immune systems become asymptomatic carriers who unknowingly spread it to others.

-The common cold is a virus, not a bacterial infection. Antibiotics cannot cure your cold. You know this; Stop playing dumb and asking your doctors for them anyway.

-Attempts at creating a common cold vaccine have also been proven futile, as viruses are varied and rapidly mutating.

-If you're experiencing mucus overload, best to just let it ride.

Moussaka--sounds like mucus, tastes totally different

Is it Love or Heart Failure?

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire Elizabeth Taylor was hospitalized last Friday for Congestive Heart Failure. She has officially been suffering from CHF since 2004. My unofficial theory is that she has been showing symptoms her entire life. The symptoms of CHF are strikingly similar to those of being in love, which Elizabeth Taylor did a lot.

CHF is when blood can‘t make it away from the heart and into the far reaching nooks of the body. Causes include high blood pressure, narrowed arteries, a past heart attack, congenital heart disease or a past heart valve problem. Meanwhile, Phenylethylamine (PEA, or “love chemical”) is an alkaloid, or chemical with a nitrogen base, that occurs naturally in the brain. It is released with highest frequency during the early stages of a budding romance, the first 6 months to three years.

A symptomatic breakdown:

CHF--Rapid/irregular pulse. Blood is flowing into the circulatory system at half its normal rate (35% verses 65%).
PEA--Running pulse. You’re thinking about sex.

CHF--Shortness of breath. Not enough oxygenated blood is making it to the lungs.
PEA--Heavy breathing. Still…thinking about sex.

CHF--Weight gain. Your metabolism is slowing with the lack of blood flow.
PEA--Heady emotions. “Do I look fat in this dress?”

CHF--Swelling of feet and ankles. The blood is just not flowing there.
PEA--Sweaty palms and shaky knees. Um, it’s a stretch.

CHF--General restlessness. Your heart is sick!
PEA--General restlessness. Your heart is sick!

What can we take away from this? Very little, if anything. Happy Valentine's Day. And shout out to the single ladies.

Life with Camry

Humans can’t get enough of longing for the unobtainable. If only--the ubiquitous phrase. If only I had cable, I could waste away more hours watching the NBA’s ridiculously long season. Or a smaller waist line, then I’d definitely get a man worth keeping! My personal favorite: if I could only get this girl/guy I’m obsessed with to notice me, I’d stop being such a douche bag to my friends. Life is deemed imperfect and empty until the next obsession comes along, creating a cyclical pattern of lust, greed and insecurity.

This winter I’ve developed one of my own. If I could only I could speak the language of my 1995 Toyota Camry, life would be a lot easier.

We haven’t been in each others’ lives that long and I’m really trying to understand her. I try to drive carefully and check her oils regularly. I even dropped a couple pay checks to get her rear struts replaced. Still, she locks her rear tires when I brake, spins them when I accelerate. She encourages unknown men to break her rear window and feel around her insides when I’m not there. Recently she locked my key in the ignition and instead of just telling me to reposition the mug in the cup holder so she’d be fully engaged in Park, she laughed at me.

She’s kind of a tease.

Okay, but is she suicidal? See she's does this thing with her gas pedal a couple times…I’ll let off and she’ll just hold it there for a second. And another second. Aaaand, there are break lights in front of us, COME ON, STOP IT, IS THIS SOME SORT OF A SICK GAME TO YOU?!? To which she’ll finally let off with a mocking rumble rumble.

The U.S. Department of Transportation says it’s not an electrical flaw. Nope, nothing wrong with her noggin ma’am, just her floor mat and/or her sticky gas pedal. SURE. Me, I think she's bat shit crazy and wants to go visit her Camry friends in recall land. I can picture them having planned this on the assembly line, exchanging VIN numbers and washer rings, “Guys, if we aren’t already totaled in 15 years, let’s all start sticking the gas pedals, okay?”

Me, I'll play along. Take her to the dealership, then maybe give her a little wax rub if she starts behaving. Maybe I'll never speak Camry, but who doesn't like to get rubbed down?

Forces in Yoga

When Janet Tsai steps in front of her Saturday morning yoga class, she's got a different vantage point than most instructors.

Instead of seeing her students like this...



She sees them like this...


Janet is a Ph.D student at the University of Colorado; her focus is engineering education with a twist (er, ardha matsyendrasana). Janet studies forces in yoga, or how fundamental laws in engineering can be identified in basic yoga poses.

An example: Janet shows Newton’s Third Law in sukasana, or the "easy sitting pose".

“Your sit bones contact the earth as your mass is pulled down by gravity. At the same time, you can feel the equal and opposite reaction of the earth as it supports your weight, pushing back up exactly equally and oppositely. Notice that your bones do not actually sink down into the earth, and the earth does not actually lift you up — instead, it’s exactly equal and perfectly matched.”

Janet breaks her research down further to show physics concepts happening in isolated body parts: torsion in a twisting spine; torque and lever arm in a bent arm. She says this example of torque is more universally accessible than, say, the infamous wrench and pipe.

“What if I’ve never used a wrench, what if I don’t know what (torque) feels like. That’s what everything else is based on. If you don’t know that first step then the rest of it’s going to be shaky. If we make people tangibly feel (torque), then they’ll have a sort of self-reliance.

Janet once counted how many free body diagrams in an introductory textbook related to structures such as cars, rockets and airplanes, then noted how many men verses women were pictured in the book. “Six women in the entire book,” she says. This is what Janet, through yoga, is trying to change.


Engineering & Yoga’s Hot Asian Lovechild

As a high schooler in Fort Collins, Janet was far from turned off from the supposedly masculine career of engineering. She was big into robotics club--“I loved creating things“ and “Guys made fun of me sometimes but it was no big deal because I was the smart Asian kid”. She proceeded on to the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, where she was part of the program’s first graduating class of 2006. The school has a unique 50-50 male to female ratio, something that Janet took for granted at the time.

When she landed her first job “laying out the curves” on robots for the company I-Robot, the lenses were abruptly removed. The company sent her to supervise factory production of their products in Shenzhen, China. “Literally, I was the only woman always,“ she said. “I was frequently mistaken for an escort.

“I felt like I was between masculine and feminine because I had to be ‘manly’ all the time.”

Janet found release in yoga. She began doing yoga constantly--in her room; her hallway; the massive seven studio center she belonged to in Hong Kong. When the year was up Janet was sent to Boston, where yoga got smoother and engineering got rough. Massive recession lay-offs in Janet‘s department meant endless work on her desk. After two years she abandoned her robotic dream job and moved back to Colorado.

In Boston she had taken a yoga teacher training course in Ashtanga-based Vinyasa, which is a classical yoga philosophy that guides its practitioners through eight steps of separation with the impure before achieving bliss. When she settled in Boulder, she began to experiment with different studios and styles. She learned the more flow-based Colorado (er, California) style, as well as Anusara, a form of yoga grounded in the Tantric philosophy. Tantric is a “heart-centered" philosophy--instead of realizing a separation of mind and body, the mind and body are connected. "It teaches you that everything you need is within," Janet says.

The practice helped her put her engineering experience into perspective.

“I realized that I can actually see things in a different way than most of the people I work with in engineering…and maybe I can try to change it.”

Janet applied and was accepted into the engineering education PhD program at CU Boulder, just as she broke into the heavily saturated Boulder yoga community and landed a teaching position. The forces of yoga became stronger (or, the arrows on the free body diagrams became more defined).

Though Janet is still trying to get monetary support for her forces in yoga research, she believes in her cause. "We can empower these students," she says. "We can give them mechanical intuition." Still, the department doesn’t traditionally fund the unconventional, so it’s been an uphill battle.

One thing CU Engineering does offer in no short supply is men, many of whom Janet insists interact with no women outside of their families.

“I try and wear a skirt once a week,” she says, smiling.



Janet‘s site: http://forcesinyoga.com/pa/Home.html

*CALLING ALL ENGINEERS: What are your thoughts? Related experiences/ideas to share? Nerdy jokes to replace "forces of yoga getting stronger"? Please comment!